Anki

Anki is a kind of flashcard software and it is my favourite language learning tool. I use it every day and I love it. (I have no affiliation or link with Anki. I just like it.) It's amazing because you can make flashcards easily and these flashcards let you learn anything. Anki only shows you the flashcards that you need to review on that day, so it's very efficient. And if you use flashcards to learn grammar or vocabulary really well, so that they're automatic, you'll be able to find the correct English phrase or sentence when you're talking, without thinking about it.

Would you like to try it? Anki is free to download to your computer and there's also a free app for Android phones. (The iPhone and iPad app isn't free.) There's also a website, Ankiweb, where you can synchronise your flashcards.

1) Go to where you can download Anki to your computer.

Click this link and you'll see the screen below. Click on the 'download' button. (I've added the orange arrow so you can see it!) and you'll get to where you can download Anki.

2) Download Anki.

Choose your operating system from the menu at the top. I have a PC, so I've chosen 'Anki for PC'. The click the big 'download' button.

3) Install Anki

Once you've downloaded Anki, double click it to install it.

4) Open Anki! It should look like this.

A group of flashcards is called a 'deck'. I already have quite a few decks on my copy of Anki (which you can see above) because I use Anki all the time.

You can make your own decks or you can download shared decks. A shared deck has been made and uploaded by someone else. To download my free shared deck about irregular verbs, click here.

There are lots of different options for making your own decks. To get started, click 'create deck' in the middle at the bottom. If you keep the 'basic' card type, it has a front and a back. I sometimes use translations (just now I'm learning German, so I write the English phrase on the front of the flashcard and I have to think of the German phrase, which is on the back of the flashcard). I also like to put in grammar exercises. I write, for example, a sentence with the verb missing on the front, and I have to put in the correct verb form on the back.